Matthias

Matthias (born Feb. 24, 1557, Vienna—died March 20, 1619, Vienna) was the Holy Roman emperor from 1612, who, in a reversal of the policy of his father, Maximilian II, sponsored a Catholic revival in the Habsburg domains that, despite his moderating influence, eventually led to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War.

The third son of the archduke Maximilian of Austria (later emperor), Matthias received no territories on his father’s death. This incapable and unreliable Habsburg ruler was invited by the Catholic nobility of the Spanish Netherlands to replace Don Juan of Austria as governor general (1577). Unable to arrange a compromise peace between Spain and the Protestant faction headed by William of Orange, he returned to Germany in 1581. Appointed governor of Austria in 1593 by his oldest brother, the emperor Rudolf II, Matthias continued the Emperor’s policy of backing the Counter-Reformation, suppressing several peasant rebellions (1595–97) caused by the government’s attempts to suppress Protestantism, though not without being forced to grant concessions. In about 1598 he met Melchior Klesl, a cleric who became his principal adviser and was to play an important role in imperial affairs.

When, by the turn of the century, Rudolf became increasingly unbalanced and unable to conduct the affairs of state, the archdukes of the House of Habsburg pressed for a succession settlement. In 1606 they recognized Matthias, whose elder brother Ernest had died in 1595, as head of the family and as heir to the throne. He now began a struggle against Rudolf that lasted until the Emperor’s death in 1612.

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Matthias had been imperial commander in chief against the Turks in 1594–95 and 1598–1601. In 1606 he was able to sign an armistice, reaffirmed in 1615, that brought peace to the Turkish frontier for a half century. He also ended a Hungarian rebellion by negotiating a peace in 1606 that granted the estates religious freedom and some measure of political autonomy. When, in 1608, the estates of Hungary, Austria, and Moravia allied themselves with Matthias against the Emperor, Rudolf suffered a major blow. Matthias gained the Hungarian crown (as Matthias II), to which he added that of Bohemia in 1611, but was in both cases compelled to grant further concessions to the Protestants.

After his succession to the imperial throne on Rudolf’s death in 1612, Matthias increasingly withdrew from public life, leaving Klesl in charge of most affairs of state. The imperial Diet had been paralyzed since 1608 over disputes between Protestant and Catholic princes, but Matthias and Klesl failed in their attempts to reconcile both parties, while the younger Habsburg archdukes encouraged Germany’s Catholic princes to further intransigence. The archdukes decided that the archduke Ferdinand of Styria (the future emperor Ferdinand II) should succeed Matthias, who was old, ill, and childless, as emperor. Ferdinand was accepted as king of Bohemia in 1617 and crowned king of Hungary in 1618 but met with Protestant resistance in Bohemia. Matthias and Klesl advised concessions to the Protestants, but Ferdinand refused compromise. The resulting Bohemian Revolt of 1618 became the first hostile act of the Thirty Years’ War. Matthias died the following year.